Lineup Performance: Missouri vs. Alabama State

If you haven’t noticed, Missouri deeply values the stylistic diversity made possible by its offseason retrofit.

The Tigers can punch the gas to play in transition. Or grind out games in the half-court. They can assault the rim. Or bomb away from deep. They can turn athleticism loose in an assertive version of man-to-man. Or they can rely on their length by settling into various incarnations of zone. 

Its identity is so fluid that it can quickly shift within a few minutes and substitutions. 

Considering how injury luck made the program operate within tight constraints last season, we shouldn’t dismiss Mizzou’s malleability. Yet Monday’s 82-65 win over Alabama State underscores how a plethora of options can become equally tricky as SEC play tips off this weekend. 

Usually, December is a paring season, a stretch where coaches start optimizing their rotations and structuring their sub pattern to keep the most effective combinations on the floor. Put another way, programs edit, tighten and refine. 

But the Tigers still seem content to throw around kitchen sinks in Columbia. Currently, MU’s most-used lineup has only played 6.9 percent of minutes. Its top 10 groups have only logged 25 percent of minutes. Eighty-five combinations spent less than a minute together.

A couple of weeks ago, we noted that Gates has a hierarchy for his personnel. But whether he and his staff would use the final three games to home in on their preferred blends was unclear. Well, Monday showed that it’s still a work in progress. 

The last game of non-conference is trickier than some think, too. It comes after a long layoff after players trickle back in from several days of flipping off the switch with family. Slow starts aren’t uncommon. 

To its credit, MU brought the proper engagement and energy against the Hornets, keying in on a scouting report structured to limit 3-point attempts. Unfortunately, loose ball handling undercut the Tigers on the other end with three turnovers in the opening four minutes. It’s also where the Tigers acutely felt Anthony Robinson’s one-night absence with an illness. 

Gates’ opening rotations got off to a stilted start scoring, and when he started reaching farther down his bench, lineups lacked enough punch to create separation quickly. Let’s look at some usage rates for the past month, shall we?

• Josh Gray: 7.4 percent
• Aidan Shaw: 10.1 percent
• Marcus Allen: 12.3 percent

Allen and Shaw, who are defensive specialists, were among the first players to check in. They shared the court with Jacob Crews, the epitome of a floor spacer. Bates isn’t an actual secondary creator, and Tony Perkins doesn’t operate as a set-up man in ball screens. That’s not a remedy when the other three Tigers rely on their teammates to gin up opportunities.

It added up to eight minutes of inert execution offensively. 

MU finally perked up once Perkins, Marques Warrick, Caleb Grill, Trent Pierce, and Mark Mitchell came together as a small-ball outfit. That group had enough functional size to stymie ASU defensively while ramping up the Tigers’ transition attack, kicking off what became an 8-0 spurt to push the lead to 30-16 with 5:52 until half time. 

There was still enough juice that Gates could feed minutes to Annor Boateng and T.O. Barrett and see the lead grow to 42-24 at the break. That momentum carried over to an 8-2 run out of the locker room by Gates’ starters, who expanded the lead to 24 points. 

Once MU built a comfortable working margin, Gates turned to lineups that throttled back the tempo. The Tigers spent the next three or four minutes cycling through base concepts on offense, using away screens to set up high pick-and-rolls or delay sets. And at the 11:01 mark, garbage time arrived, and Gates entered his artist’s studio. 

Had Robinson been good to go, 13 players would likely have seen the floor. That’s tantalizing for a staff. But mixing and matching isn’t always additive. When you look over the combinations MU deployed, too many lineups brought together too many low-usage offensive threats. 

Crews, Allen and Shaw spent 4:52 together in the first half. Crews, Shaw and Gray collaborated for nearly two minutes early in the second half. Then, Crews, Allen and Shaw closed the final 1:39 of the game. That’s almost eight minutes of action allocated to Tigers toward the bottom of the offensive pecking order. 

That dosage would have been high with Robinson in the lineup. With him unavailable, though, the Tigers tasked Warrick and Barrett with backfilling for 11 minutes at lead guard. While the Tigers let the rope slip to allow a 10-4 run, defense wasn’t the issue. (ASU underperformed its forecasted output.) Instead, too many configurations lacked enough scoring pop for the Tigers to run up a big margin. 

If you perused Study Hall, you know Tony Perkins, Tamar Bates, and Mark Mitchell did their jobs well, and Trent Pierce validated his first career start with a dozen points and eight rebounds. Warrick might have struggled a bit running the point, but his eight minutes at combo guard proved productive. 

We’ve already noted that Robinson’s illness sapped some on-ball creativity, but it was also a rocky night for a couple of MU’s floor spacers. Unsurprisingly, Grill needs time to dial his jumper back in after missing almost a month of action. Crews’ struggles were more notable. The UT-Martin transfer finished with a 68.7 offensive rating on 17.1 percent usage, and the Tigers were minus-7 with him on the floor.

That’s not Crews’ worst performance during non-conference play, but it’s a frustrating regression after three objectively solid outings. Had he kept the momentum going, it would have provided cover for Grill getting his sea legs back. 

We can accept that Shaw, Gray, and Allen won’t be linchpins for the Tigers’ attack, and there are ways to structure lineups to account for that reality. One way is to put Grill or Crews on the wing to bang in jumpers that keep defenses from compacting the floor, giving those rim finishers more operating room. That didn’t happen on Monday. 

The other option is to constrict the rotation to lineups to only have one of Shaw, Gray, or Allen on the floor. In other words, be pragmatic. Trot out your best combinations, swiftly put down an overmatched SWAC squad, and let those groups find a groove before using the final 10 minutes to let freshmen get some final burn before conference play. 

But if you think depth is your best asset and are inclined to tinker, Monday’s game flow makes sense. We know its Gates’ outlook. It’s a testament to talent accumulation that he can sculpt many iterations of the Tigers. But has he found the best version? We’ll see soon enough.